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Thursday, April 18, 2013

The Syrian guests in a Turkish shed

Um Maher (left) and Mariam

It is always a difficult choice in times of war: stay and
die or flee and become a refugee – at times for life.

The revolution in Syria, now into its third year, has uprooted
up to 1.5 million people and internally displaced another four million, making
Syrians one of the largest
urban-refugee populations in the world.

Mariam made this hard
choice.

After losing her
husband in the fighting, she was forced to flee, with her eight children in tow,
the ceaseless government airstrikes on the Idlib area in northwestern Syria
where they lived.

The nine crossed into
Turkey on foot and had the good fortune of knocking at the door of a humble farmhouse
sitting right on the Syrian-Turkish border.

Um Maher, the Turkish
woman farm owner, took pity on them and offered them to stay in the only
portion of space available in her livestock shed.

Alarabiya TV presenter
and journalist Rima Maktabi unearthed the tiny farmhouse for a human-interest
feature and an on camera chat with Syrian refugee Mariam and her Turkish
benefactor Um Maher.

The chicken, the cow, the shed and Rima Maktabi chatting to Um Maher and Mariam

A three-minute video
aired this week by Alarabiya TV shows Maktabi, a Lebanese media figure recognized
for her coverage of the2006 Lebanon war, visiting the tiny farmhouse. She gives the livestock shed the
once-over, focusing on the section where the woman refugee from Idlib and her
brood sleep, cook, eat, wash and bathe, before conversing with Mariam and her
eldest son Khaled and with Um Maher.

“We fled the airstrikes. We had no place to
hide. We just left carrying nothing,” says Mariam.

“Who helps you now?” Maktabi wonders.

Mariam breaks into tears

“Here? Charitable people,” Mariam replies while
her children jump all over her before she breaks into tears.

“When they give us something, we eat.
Otherwise we don’t. God looks after us. What can we do?”

Though a shed, they have a “roof” over
their head thanks to the big-hearted Um Maher, a Turk who speaks broken Arabic.

Maktabi asks Um Maher if she charges Mariam
any rent.

“No, no. Look, they have nothing. How could
I charge them rent?” she replies raising her hands and pointing at Mariam and
her children. “They’re hungry, God help them! Are we expected to take their soul?
They’re hungry. Look, they are all young…”

Um Maher’s shed, cow and chickens are all
she owns.

Mariam's eldest son Khaled tends to the cow

Mariam’s eldest son, Khaled, tends the cow
and chickens with his sister in way of repaying Um Maher.